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An Unlikely Injury

The plan at Saxkova Palačinkarna (Sax is a dog, by the way) tonight was simple: two cups of tea, two beers, and an evaluation of the effect on the first 150 pages of The Monster Within if I add two telling words in the fourth paragraph. The result: three teas, three beers, a rewrite of chapter three, and a bloody knuckle. The first results can be attributed to bad communication, bad counting, and good ideas. The last is a little more complicated. In fact, when I left Saxarna my knuckle was still intact. Indeed, as I emerged from the convenience store with a loaf of bread (the crumbs of which I am picking out of my keyboard as I compose this), I was still more or less in one piece. As I stepped out of the store and put the earphones in, however, I sowed the seeds of my own destruction.

In retrospect, perhaps it was not the act of putting phone to ear that did me in, it was my skipping over a tune in the shuffle because it was too mellow. Thus it was that “Electro” by Gwen Mars was crashing against my eardrums when I got home. I set aside my backpack, and there in the kitchen I proceeded to Rock Out. It was with a grand leaping air-guitar flourish that I cracked my hand into the ceiling lamp.

It wasn’t until after the number off the new(ish) Dickies album was over that I noticed the blood. Rest assured, by then the house was rocked.

And no, I was not wearing it last night. That jacket was snug when my waist was at 29 inches. Five inches added at the waist (and many more just upstairs) later, the showdown between me and the jacket would have no winner.

I think I did a fair Townsend last night; in fact, I’m pretty sure in a showdown I could kick his ass at Rocking Out these days. I have a little more spring than he does, and a whole lot more hectic.

When he does not deign to answer my challenge, that just proves I’m right.

As far as the web cam in the apartment goes, allow me to tell you a little story.

[Note: although I heard this story from someone who was involved (more that one of my Physics professors was a McCarthy survivor) time and brain cell abuse leaves this story as something for you to think about but not quote.]

There was a time when the United States was at war against other major industrial powers whose leaders were genuinely evil. (We were so overpoweringly right in this conflict that we haven’t got over it sixty years later.) Thus it came to pass that in Los Alamos, New Mexico, there was a tank which held a dangerous isotope in solution. There was a fire.

The general in charge wanted to know if the fire might have been caused by an atomic reaction in the tank. The man left to explain chose to evoke Maxwell’s demon, and said something like, “the chances of that happening are about the same as all the air molecules in this room suddenly diving under the table and blasting it out through the roof.”

“So it is possible,” the general confirmed.

So you have your impossible, and you have your event that is so unlikely you would have to wait several times the age of the universe to have any shot at seeing it happen.

It’s possible that all the air molecules on Earth will smack into each other just right so that one of them will blast out through the universe at essentially the speed of light, while the rest fall as snow to the surface of our planet. It’s not likely. In fact, it’s only slightly more likely than me putting a Web cam in my apartment.

After I posted that, I took a look in the Encyclopedia Galactica (um… I mean wikipedia) for Maxwell’s Demon. I got as far as “Alternate and Improved Demons: Episode 2” when I realized that I was going to have to tackle the rest of the entry well-rested. I’m going to sleep now, and tomorrow is an intellectual christmas.)

I saw Adam Ant at UCSD with a friend. The roadies came over to us and asked us to go back stage to ‘party’ with the ‘star’. We laughed listened to another set and bailed. Adam (must have been toasted or wasted) yelled at us from the stage to stay. Still cracks me up.

Lydia, what year was that?
Bands I saw at the UCSD Gym (long, long before Remac center): Robert Fripp, Oingo Boingo, Sparks, Penetrators…
I missed out on the two legendary concerts (before my time): REM and Pretenders.

Keith…sounds about the right time. Oh wait, that was The Clash (Combat Rock tour) I saw with the Pretenders.

I don’t remember who Adam Ant was touring with then. It was early 80s and somewhere (in my mom’s album collection)there is an obnoxious picture of me and my best friend dressed wickedly. Streaks of paint on our cheeks, long skinny braids with ribbons in middle of mess. Pants with long shoe laces wound up our calves. Of course the obligatory 4 inch high heeled boots. Those were the days :-)

Keith…my 40th bday mom had wall of shame of my various personas. I went home and burned some of my clothes I think after that and questioned my hair choices. Anyone who visits and sits still for a nanosecond can be shown. *gulp*